The Humanity of Animals and the Animality of Humans

The Vietnam War

The Vietnam War. The man can make movies. The story was so engrossing that I kept wishing the episode wouldn’t end. The filmmakers got much of the story right. But the story was told through a liberal-progressive – and deeply anticommunist – lens. Perhaps best exemplified by consistent use of “Viet Cong” to describe the NLF forces in the South, a pejorative slapped on them by the South Vietnamese puppets. I also agree with Nick Turse who wrote Kill Everything that Moves in his critique that Burns minimizes civilian casualties: https://theintercept.com/2017/09/28/the-ken-burns-vietnam-war-documentary-glosses-over-devastating-civilian-toll/

But the film makes a strong anti-war statement. I was surprised for example that they explored the wide-spread practice of “fragging” – enlisted men killing their “superior” officers.

For me it provoked memories of sitting in my kitchen in Berkeley, a college student, my ear glued to KPFA, left-wing radio, which would have the gruesome details of the day’s war. Even though I’d been through the Free Speech Movement which punctured my illusions about liberalism, I was shocked that the U. S. would descend so far into barbarism.

I also recalled the sense of movement, the times they are a changing. The people were in motion. Around the world. In 1968 alone, there was the Tet Offensive, the Cultural Revolution in China, King’s assassination and the insurrection it provoked, Chicago, strikes at Harvard, Columbia, and San Francisco State. A worker-student general strike in France. Half a million plus in antiwar marches in the U. S.

We had the capitalists on the run, and watching them callously abandon Saigon was a revolting yet inspiring sight. The U. S. didn’t just lose the war in Vietnam. The U. S. was humiliated. By the international working class, a body of people we need to re-focus our attention on.

What happened? We — the people’s movement — had so much going for us, but with the exception of Vietnam itself, we failed to consolidate our winnings, to secure our territory. We allowed the divisions among us to re-emerge. My first reaction was to think we blew it. But that’s not a helpful perspective. Sometimes we need to calibrate our perspective. The movement ebbs and flows. We are fighting the most powerful – and well-armed system the world has ever known, international capitalism.

And yet, all that power and all those arms couldn’t defeat a largely barefoot enemy with barely enough to eat. The other thing you get from the film is the sense of how brilliant the North Vietnamese military strategists were – and how utterly incompetent the U. S. generals were, resulting in thousands of unnecessary deaths.

The collapse of the Soviet Union has left a deep hole in our strategy. Flawed as it was, it played essential roles in supporting our movement in Vietnam, Cuba, Angola, South Aftica, Nicaragua. Now we have Putin. The Communist Party of the US collapsed with it. The CPUSA was for many years the most effective reform organization in the country, leading fights of the 8 hour day, social security, unemployment insurance, building the unions, and sparking the civil rights movement.

We could start to rebuild the international movement by supporting Venezuela.

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One thought on “The Vietnam War”

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Squirrels in the Wall

New book coming October 2019

Squirrels in the Wall―a novel told in stories by a collection of interspecies voices―presents a unique and darkly hilarious blend of human and animal perspectives in a single setting on a Wisconsin lake. The stories provide a kaleidoscope of heartbreak among both human and animal characters as they confront abuse and death.

“They call me Herziger, but my real name is Woof,” one of the stories opens. “They call me a dachshund, but in reality, I am just a dog. I live with my mother among a pack of wild humans in a big house on a lake.” In the second story, “Squirrels in the Wall,” Herzie’s “human,” Barney Blatz, experiences a fire in that house when he is just four. The stories follow Barney from infancy to death, tracing the epic, ongoing conflict between him and Father―a bumbling tyrant guilty of shocking abuse but also capable of poignant redemption.

On this rollicking journey, we meet a suicidal toad, a cat, two mice, a bee, grandfather’s ghost, and a turtle who possesses Barney in a climactic tale of environmental activism gone awry. Other stories reflect the points of view of Barney’s mother, sister, and older brother; together, they construct a collage of spectacular family dysfunction ― and of healing love.

Henry Hitz laces this riveting, thought provoking journey, Squirrels in the Wall, with dollops of juicy humor. Dogs, bees, a fox, humans, turtles, and other assorted critters–both dead and alive–all ponder, question, and wonder about that line blurring life and death. “Life is death’s dream?” Under the masterful hand of Mr. Hitz, we are in for a thoroughly enjoyable and informative read.

–Francine Thomas Howard, author of two Amazon bestsellers: Page from a Tennessee Journal, and The Duke of Union County

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White Knight

In 1977, a fireman named Dan White saved a woman and her babies from a fire in the Geneva Towers apartments in San Francisco. It is this scene which opens White Knight, the story of one witness to that fire, Barney Blatz, and his entanglement with the political and personal catastrophe which followed. With the November, 1978 Jonestown Massacre of 912 people and, three days later, White’s murder of Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, the city and Barney unraveled. “There’s a bumper sticker that reads ‘Time is nature’s way of keeping everything from happening at once,’ but this November, it isn’t working.”

A powerful tale set in San Francisco during the turbulent late ‘70s. Hitz makes you feel that you were there, and shows how we came to grasp that ‘the personal is political’ and, alas, vice versa. An elegant debut novel.